


kṣudhitam

by toujours_nigel



Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 07:43:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18384002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: The Vedic Gods are President Snow et al. Please don't read this if you're a devout and/or defensive Hindu.





	kṣudhitam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/gifts).



> The Vedic Gods are President Snow et al. Please don't read this if you're a devout and/or defensive Hindu.

The Gods judge us and we must endure.

The Gods test us and we must obey.

The Gods burn us and

“We get crisped,” said the boy next to Draupadi in an undertone aimed at the girl on his other side, who batted irritably at his arm without taking her eyes off the apsara droning on about the goodness of the Gods.

In any other context, Draupadi would have been fascinated; even with dread growing cold in the pit of her stomach, she couldn’t look away from the crystalline walls, from the woven wind furnishings, from the apsara herself: seven foot tall and sonorous, dazzlingly beautiful and manifestly inhuman.

 _Everyone_ was looking at her, or nearly everyone. Shikhandi kept trying to look away, map and memorise ways in and out, but even he kept glancing back like she was a magnet drawing all eyes. A boy in vibrant Yadava yellow was blatantly looking everywhere else: contorting to get a better glimpse of the windows, and beside Draupadi the rude boy had gone back to looking at his hands. The girl beside _him_ was staring raptly, Draupadi wouldn’t bet on her having blinked.

* * *

 

But she must have taken in more than obvious, because she came up to Draupadi’s table at lunch, the boy scowling behind her, and set her tray beside Shikhandi’s. She was smaller than Draupadi, with sticks for arms, and a smile that looked out of place.

“I’m Dushala,” she said, and extended a hand towards Draupadi.

“Panchali,” Draupadi replied, shaking it. A stupid move, but she couldn’t credit the girl with the foresight necessary for buying a skinsim glove and coating it with slow-acting poison. Shikhandi was glaring at her anyway, which meant she was going to be shouted at later.

“This is Duryodhana,” Dushala said, nudging the boy. “We’re from Hastinapuri,” she added, just as though the elephant symbolism wasn’t clear enough with their grey clothes.

Well. They might have been the pair from Gandhar, draped in synthwolf pelt. That meant Gandhar was the pair in white two tables over, a lanky girl and a boy probably shorter than Dushala.

“Cried a lot when you were little?” Shikhandi asked, not much hostility in his voice. Well, for Shikhandi.

“Our father’s blind,” Duryodhana said, chin going up. “Called me his noisemaker.”

“Well, sit down O Loud One. Panchali, get the Yadavas to budge up.”

The Yadavas budged up, the girl punching Shikhandi on the shoulder as she shuffled along the bench, the boy one second beside Draupadi and the next tugging her across the space he’d cleared. Duryodhana clanked down on her other side and reached over to tear open the sealed nutribar his sister was fumbling.

* * *

 

Draupadi thought she should have enjoyed being dressed up rather more than she did. It had sounded exciting and nauseating all at once, the way the apsara had said it, being “divine for one night”.

Instead Sthuna said, “You’re perfect, I wouldn’t change a thing,” and turned his attention to Shikhandi.

Perfect must have meant something different in Swarg than in Panchal, because four of his minions descended on Draupadi and forced her to spend the next hour reclining with her hair dipped in a tub of swirling colour. Her only consolation was that she could hear Shikhandi arguing--increasingly panicked--against facial implants.

* * *

 

“You looked good,” the Yadava boy said the next morning. Krishna, he said his name was, but Draupadi couldn’t make herself think it.

Out loud she said, “You too, both of you.” It shouldn’t be so difficult to say it, even if it was an uncommon name. He was Krishna Vasudeva, she was Krishna Panchali. It wasn’t the same.

He said, “Better than the gold monstrosity the Magadh team wore, at least. What were they supposed to be?”

His hands--roving over the weapons in their sheaths--were the brown of her hands, dark like freshly-plowed earth. His eyes, when she looked up, were glinting, and his mouth was twitching up into a smile.

“I thought they were enacting the Kalpavriksha,” she essayed. “But the Chedis were clearly trees and now I’m unsure again. Shrines, perhaps?”

“To Magadh’s power, perhaps. Well, pick a weapon before our partners scold us.”

An arrow thwocked through the target in punctuation. It shimmered and reformed, and Shikhandi gestured the Yadava girl into place, looked towards them and frowned.

“Quickly, now,” Vasudeva said. “What do you use?”

“Daggers,” she said. “Any kind. I would have started on swords this winter.”

“Daggers are sensible, especially with your brother a ranged fighter. You can finish off the ones he drops. Do you know how to throw them?”

“I have a set at home,” Draupadi admitted.

“There should be one… ah, here, let’s see if they’re balanced.”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Vasudeva turned to Shikhandi grinning, the smallest of the knives still balanced on his index finger. “I’m recruiting an ally. Why, what did it look like?”

“Like you’re filling her head with nonsense,” Shikhandi bit out. “There are no allies on the killing fields.”

“Think, will you? Nobody survives the melee alone; even Magadh’s building a team.”

“I’ve seen the team Magadh’s building,” Shikhandi said, and wrapped an arm around Draupadi’s shoulders. “Three of the youngest in the Game, to toss towards death while they race for safety.”

“My aunt was a Victor at twelve,” Vasudeva said, still smiling. “You shouldn’t underestimate the children.”

“Your aunt’s a Victor? Did she train you?” Draupadi ventured. Their mother had been chosen at thirteen, but an older girl had volunteered and died in her place.

“No. She disappeared years ago, along with my cousins.”

Behind them, the target rippled into nothingness, the tight cluster of successes vanishing in a red smear. Satyabhama unslung her quiver and put it with her longbow on the weapons rack, and wandered over to watch Duryodhana and the boy from Sindhu feint at each other with maces. They did this, the Yadavas, moved around like curious birds, like it was permissible for them to go where they chose, and somehow, when they decided to, it was. Duryodhana warded off the Saindhav with a few blows and turned to her, the set of his shoulders easing as she spoke.

“Ah,” Vasudeva said, and Draupadi realised she had only turned to watch Satyabhama because he had, as though they were chords strung to the same frequency, as though she was attuned to him. “Now we can talk.”

* * *

 

Duryodhana refused the alliance, even as Dushala agreed to it. The two of them went into a corner to argue and gesticulate.

The Yadavas followed it with interest for about a minute and then Vasudeva snagged the entire pile of discuses and throwing knives off the table and sat down with Satyabhama to judge each for balance and ease.

“We don’t have to join them,” Shikhandi muttered. “Not everyone is forming up into a team.”

“Does it better our chances of survival?”

“Dearest,” Shikhandi said, “we must go in there knowing we will die.”

“Not everyone.”

“No,” he replied and paused, thinking.

Affection from Shikhandi was so rare a boon that Draupadi stood still within the circle of his arm and watched him. Memorised him: the unruly curls at his temple still tinged red, the lines left by a lifetime of lopsided smiles, the archer’s calluses on his fingers, the poise with which he stood. Her brother. He would be dead in days, or she would. The way his forehead furrowed in thought would disappear from the world, or her memory of it would.

She hugged him, fierce and clinging, the breath going out of his body as her arms wrapped around his waist.

“Perhaps you’ll win,” Shikhandi told her. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Perhaps you will. You’re agile and stealthy and strong enough. But you must go in there prepared to fight for your life every second, and you can’t do that if you think you have allies who will rush to protect you. Now come decide what skill you’ll show the gods.”

Dushala came up to the Yadavas while Draupadi was deciding how best to look both sincere and unskilled with a pair of knives slightly too big for her hands, and bowed prettily.

“My brother has gone to speak to our great-uncle and seek his advice.” Her head came up, and she dimpled into a smile. “I think he’ll agree with me.”

“Should we ask the Acharya?” Draupadi asked as Satyabhama teased Dushala about her precocious sagacity.

Shikhandi shook his head. “I’d never trust Drona’s intentions, and it’d only make me doubt my own mind. If you trust them, we’ll go with them.”

“You don’t trust them.”

“I trust nobody but you. Now run through the drill again for me.”

* * *

 

The cannon boomed thrice after the melee, the sky filling with dead faces as they stumbled into the high grass and kept climbing.

Draupadi had Dushala’s forearm gripped tight in one hand, her fingers biting down as she towed the younger girl along. Dushala had sprained an ankle and refused to let her brother carry her: a brave move, but foolish. The grass came up to Dushala’s shoulders, and she was the shortest one left alive, save the girl from Videha who Draupadi very much doubted was crouched in the grassland waiting to ambush them. Duryodhana could have helped her limp along far more easily than Draupadi could: on him the grass was only waist-high, and the bag of equipment didn’t seem to hinder his movement.

Still, Dushala was deathly pale. When they paused for breath, Draupadi asked, “Are you hurt?”

“Hardly a scratch, and we have synthskin.”

“Because of you. I wouldn’t have thought to go for it.”

She had dived for the food cache instead, piling parched rice and dried fruit and meat into her bag while Satyabhama stood guard over her.

The weapons hoard had been a riot, and she was still unsure how the boys had gathered as much as they had: two maces, bows and full quivers for Satyabhama and Shikhandi, a belt of knives. Vasudeva’s discus, which had drawn blood as soon as he had snatched it up.

The boy from Chedi had fallen to the ground in pieces as Dushala scrambled back shrieking. She’d kept hold of the medical kit, though, even with the shock and the deep cut on her right wrist welling blood.

“I shouted out, it was foolish. Without you and Satyabhama I would have died then.”

Satyabhama had hauled Dushala off her feet and away while Draupadi slashed at the pair from Madra. She had struck one, who faltered as blood gushed from a wound.

And then Duryodhana had leapt into the struggle, laying about him with a mace bigger than her head. Draupadi had followed Satyabhama’s lead and fled, Dushala dangling between them and limping for her life. The boys had caught up at a run, and they had left the melee nearly unscathed. Dushala was still bleeding, her ankle likely swollen, but they had taken no other hurt, unless Shikhandi or Vasudeva were hiding injuries.

Vasudeva, at the lead of the pack, gestured for silence, and they quietened and ground to a halt. Duryodhana and Satyabhama stalked forward, crouched below eyeline and soon invisible in the grass.

There was a scuffle, and then a child’s voice raised briefly in terror. Dushala flinched minutely, and Draupadi hoped her own horror hadn’t transmitted itself through her hold on the girl. They had to kill, those were the terms of the Game.

But they came back with a boy whose uniform had the white accents of Gandhar, visible even through the blood coating him. Draupadi skipped aside as Duryodhana shepherded him into the group, and Dushala caught him in an embrace.

Shikhandi snagged her by the collar, and pulled her in as he fell in step with Satyabhama, Vasudeva circling around to flank them.

“He’s their cousin,” Satyabhama said. His partner got wounded but they managed to escape the melee.”

“Then she died,” Draupadi guessed.

“She died. We found him trying to put her guts back in. What do we do?”

“And then there were seven,” Vasudeva said. “Come on, we need to keep going.”

The cannon boomed, and a dead girl floated in the sky, a single blue flower tucked behind her ear: a forlorn scrap of beauty against her bloodied face.

* * *

 

Uluk was quiet, and clung to Dushala, rarely letting go of her hand as they scrambled up past the fringe of grassland into the foothills. They set camp with the sun still in the sky, if losing heat and casting long shadows, in the grotto of one of the hills that reared high above them. Vasudeva brushed a thin layer of synthskin on Dushala’s wrist, and let Satyabhama coax and bully him into bandaging his ribs alongside Dushala’s ankle.

Draupadi parceled out the food, which seemed to have grown when she wasn’t looking. She had been certain there would be barely enough for a single meal, but pamic must have clouded her judgement. After everyone had their share, the cache looked as though it had barely been touched.

Vasudeva allowed them to light a fire while there was still light, heat water to wash blood from Uluk’s face. In the few hours they had been out in the arena, he had somehow become their leader. Perhaps he had been their leader from the beginning, and they hadn’t noticed. It had been his idea to form an alliance, and they had survived the melee when so many hadn’t. The boy from Chedi, the pair from Madra, the girl from Gandhar, perhaps others.

As they sat eating, the cannon boomed again. The pair from Magadh swam into view against the sky, blood-soaked and triumphant, crashing into an embrace. Then the boy stumbled, his limbs slackening, and fell to his knees, while the girl withdrew a needle from his neck.

“That’s five,” Shikhandi said as the image faded. “Let’s hope they kill a few more of each other in the night.”

Dushala, who had stared at the sky the longest among them, finally looked away and said. “I don’t even know why we have the Games.”

“Didn’t pay attention in class, eh,” Satyabhama laughed, and recited, “In the Satya Yuga there were Games every generation, that heroes as they grew might believe in the gods and learn obedience, even as they warred against each other. In the Treta they had Games every decade. In the Dwapar Yuga, where we now are, we fight every other year to please the gods and renew our vows of obedience. In the next Yuga, perhaps there will be Games every month.”

“Or perhaps there will be none,” Vasudeva muttered, “and perhaps there were none in other Yugas. Go to sleep, will you?”

They quieted, Satyabhama reaching out to fumble for and smack Vasudeva’s shoulder, Dushala letting her brother pull her close. The first watch was Vasudeva and Uluk. The third watch was Duryodhana and Vasudeva. Vasudeva said he didn’t sleep very much anyway, and nobody said a word about how useless Uluk was going to be if there was an attack.

Draupadi had the second watch, with Dushala, and stayed awake afterwards, counting stars and straining to hear a cannon-blast, even as the younger girl rolled into the warm nest her brother vacated and promptly slackened in sleep.

* * *

 

The night stayed quiet.

“What will you do if it’s you and Dushala at the end?”

“Kill her and then myself,” Duryodhana replied, quick as though he had thought about it. “What if it’s you and Satyabhama?”

“She volunteered for my sister,” Vasudeva said. “My brother was never chosen and now he’s too old. She has two sisters. I don’t know.”

“You should decide. You might be the last two standing.”

“Yeah?” His voice had a knowing lilt, like he knew what Duryodhana was thinking, like he knew that Draupadi was lying under her blanket curious, listening in. “How do you figure that?”

“You’re competent, and you have an advantage over most of the rest of us. You could please the gods, get an edge.”

“Give them a demo of what they could get if one of us won?”

Duryodhana laughed. “You were already trapped from the moment they called your name. Now you’ll die with the rest of us or you’ll be a Victor and feted by the gods. What else is there?”

“You would rather die than be favoured by the gods? Rather kill your little sister than let fame come to her? All that wealth, all those boons they promise the Victor’s clan.”

“Uluk’s father was a Victor when he was fifteen,” Duryodhana said. “My mother was already married, safe because the gods favoured my father’s clan. He could calculate probabilities uncannily well, that’s how he won. He gamed the system. He thought he could game the gods too, refuse them and still retain their favour.”

“You can’t cheat the gods,” Vasudeva said, and his voice went through Draupadi. He had been liltingly amused a second ago, and now he was sombre. Even the old truism sounded weighty in his voice.

“What _can_ you do to please the gods? My great-uncle, he used their favour to buy my father out of the Games, wouldn’t increase some poor kid’s chances to save him. My uncle won his Games. Married the girl who was a Victor four years earlier.”

“I know. She was my aunt.”

“I never met her. Two years after that, he married the girl who was the Victor that year. My whole life I’ve heard this story, but I don’t know their names. My father called them Kunti and Madri; calls my mother Gandhari.”

“Pritha,” Vasudeva said. “My aunt’s name was Pritha. She married your uncle because the gods thought it fit.”

“The gods… My uncle nearly died in his Games, took a scythe through his torso. Shouldn’t have had any children.”

“Instead he had five sons.”

“His wives did. They were favoured by the gods. My uncle came home once, when I was ten; my grandmothers died. My aunts stayed away, with my cousins. Next year, he was dead and my cousin was twelve. They should have come home then, but they never did. You know this.”

“I know it. Perhaps the gods did them a favour and spared them.”

“Perhaps,” Duryodhan conceded, doubtful. “Yet it would have been easier to make them divine, members of Swarg. It would have been benevolent.”

“You presume to know the mind of the gods?” His voice had its lilt again: foolishly comforting.

Draupadi edged closer to Shikhandi, tugged at his arm till he wrapped it around her, still sleeping. Shikhandi had a talent for it that Draupadi envied, uselessly awake even with her head aching and body throbbing with exhaustion. She’d killed in the morning, or thought she had. There had been blood on her knife, and Shikhandi had shown her how to clean it just as though their mother hadn’t been taking her hunting since she was six.

She needed to sleep.

“I know nothing at all,” Duryodhana said. “Only I’d rather be dead than a Victor.”

“Liar. If you would rather be dead you could have died in the melee. If you would rather have your sister die than be Victor, you could have let the Madreyas kill her.”

“I couldn’t. I don’t want Dushala to die. Only if I’m about to, only if it looks like we’re winning.”

“Ah,” Vasudeva said, as though something had clicked into place and it satisfied him, “you don’t want to die, you want to send a message. Well, that we can do far more enjoyably.”

Duryodhana grumbled inarticulately and went quiet, the night sweeping back over them like a swallowing wave. Silent in the dark, they disappeared, and Draupadi lay in a huddle looking for them while the camp slept around her.

She was still awake when Duryodhana shook Shikhandi and Satyabhama awake, but lay with the blanket drawn over her head, feigning sleep. Vasudeva took Shikhandi’s spot beside her, close enough that she could feel his warmth, emulate his breath steadying in sleep.

* * *

 

In the morning the sky thrummed with the sound of great wings, shrill shrieking that raised hair on Draupadi’s arms and fear in her blood. The cannons boomed once, and the sky filled with an image of the Kalingeya boy with his eyes gouged out.

“Get under cover,” Vasudeva said as everyone sat up, startled and blinking sleep from their eyes. “Now. Don’t stand up. It’s a flock of vakasura, they can track movement from afar. Satya?”

“We have our bows,” Satyabhama said. “You have your chakra?”

“I have it,” Vasudeva said, and--against his own instructions--straightened to his full height and ran out of their shelter as the sky darkened with wings and beaks and claws.


End file.
